ACROSS THE CONTINENT. 
Beverly Farms Man Describes Trip From Bos- 
ton to California and Return. 
Thomas D. Connolly of Beverly 
Farms, who has just returned from a 
two months’ trip to San Francisco, 
begins this week on a short series of 
articles which will describe his journey 
from Boston, through Washington, 
New Orleans and other cities of inter- 
est to California, and the return home 
by way of Chicago and Niagara Falls. 
The articles are in the form of notes 
taken by Mr. Connolly. Today’s 
story lands the writer in New Or- 
leans. 
Boston to New Orleans. 
On our way from Boston nothing unusual 
happened, except perhaps, the novelty of the 
Colonial Express being hauled on to the 
Steamer Maryland at Harlem River and 
taken to Jersey City to the Penn. R.R. It 
uses up about 1% hours, but all are invited 
out on the upper deck of steamer for exer- 
cise, and the view of New York is grand. 
We arrived here at 9.45 p.m., on time. 
This is our second day here; it is snowing 
hard, and I cannot see any difference in the 
climate, though it is a little warmer. 
We have done up Washington fairly well, 
and start this noon on Southern R.R. for 
Atlanta to New Orleans. I had the good 
fortune yesterday to hear Bourke Corcoran 
speak, and I notice that they do not want to 
run up against him. The debate was about 
paying higher salaries to the school teachers 
here. We also heard a debate in the Sen- 
ate; Marcomber of North Dakota making a 
very interesting speech. 
I saw the bridge yesterday where the 
Union Soldiers during the late civil war 
retreated over to Washington at the Battle 
of Bull Run. Beyond this bridge on the 
Virginia side is Arlington, where the Na- 
tional Cemetery is located. We went 
through Georgetown College and saw all 
the portraits of illustrious graduates. There 
were pictures of General Rosencranz, Jus- 
tices White and McKenna of the U.S. 
Supreme Court, and many others who served 
both in the Northern and Southern armies 
during the civil war. We went into the 
U.S. Supreme Court where we saw Judge 
Holmes, which caused us to think we were 
at home. We left Washington at 12.03 
noon. After leaving Washington the first 
place is Alexandria, Va.; then comes Man- 
assas, Culpepper, and Orange. All these 
places were taken and retaken by the Con- 
federate and Union forces during the war, 
and near the railroad you see a large ceme- 
tery both for Southern and Northern sol- 
diers. 
The South has had a hard time of it and 
still looks poor and forlorn. Lynchburg is 
quite a city, the largest we have seen since 
leaving Washington. The Norfolk & West- 
ern R.R. crosses here. We notice a large 
cotton mill, many tobacco warehouses, brick 
ards and everything that goes to make a 
rick business town. 
We approach Charlottesville, a small city 
made famous by the former mayor being 
convicted of killing his wife, and he was 
hanged February 20th. 
The State University of Virginia is situ- 
ated here and just a little south of this town 
is Monticello the home of Thomas Jefferson. 
Then we come to Danville the last town in 
Virginia. 1 saw some remnants of the civil 
war in shape of earth works. There are 
ey tobacco ware houses and a large cotton 
mill. 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
If the South keeps on the North will not 
be in it for manufacturing cotton cloth. The 
Dwight mills of Chicopee have now a 
Dwight mill in Alabama. 
The next town that we approach is Salis- 
bury, in Western North Carolina; then 
Greensboro, where on one side of the station 
the waiting room is marked for white men 
and on the other side for colored men. Gen- 
eral Greene of Revolutionary fame lived here 
and fought the battle of Guilford Court 
house, defeating the British. A large mon- 
ument is here in record of the event. 
We arrived at Atlanta at 8.30 a.m. two 
hours late and had breakfast in the depot 
restaurant. A large cemetery is here for the 
confederate dead. There are many beautiful 
pieces of sculpture, and as you are aware 
Decoration day was born in the south. 
The scenery is not of much account around 
Atlanta; small cottages without cellars, and 
the negro shanties with the stone chimney 
built on the outside. 
This has been a cold day — 7° above zero 
this morning in Atlanta. The ‘‘ Atlanta Con- 
stitution” says “Records of cold weather 
since 1901 were smashed yesterday. 7 p.m. 
— 11° above zero; 8p.m.— 102 above zero; 
9 p.m. 8° above zero; 11 p.m. 7° above zero 
and midnight 6° above zero.” This has 
caused considerable suffering here. 
Out of Atlanta there are nothing but 
cotton fields, negroes and mules, also scat- 
tered here and there are cotton mills. A ne- 
gro will not hire a house with red cedars 
growing near for they are very superstitious 
about that tree. 
The government has a station of several 
hundred acres outside of Atlanta, called Fort 
McPherson. The fields in Georgia are in 
terraces so as to prevent water from washing 
the earth away. On these terraces they 
plant a very tall grass called crab grass. 
You will see all along little farms, on whlch 
negroes are picking cotton, there being three 
or four bales around each house. They 
rent the land for $2.00 per acre and a mule 
for $20.00 per year, the negro to keep him 
well fed. 
I set my watch back one hour at Atlanta 
so as to be “init.” You see along the rail- 
road the old planters homes of ancient days 
with four or five great columns in front look- 
ing much the same as the Kitfield home in 
Manchester or, perhaps, like the Bement es- 
tate on Jersey avenue. : 
We have just arrived at a place called 
Opelika, Alabama, and piles of cotton are 
ready to be sent out from the railroad station. 
Montgomery on the Alabama river is the 
next stop. 
We met a young priest riding on the train 
to Montgomery, who has a small college of 
fifty colored boys six miles out from Mont- 
gomery. He is obliged to cook his own 
meals, and some days only one meal at that. 
He had just been 125 miles down the road to 
baptize a whole colored family, who have 
been reading some Catholic books and from 
them received an idea of the Catholic faith. 
This young priest’s name is Francis Tobin 
and he has chosen the colored missions to 
care for their spiritual welfare no matter 
where sent. 
The condition of the colored man here is 
terrible, and the poor white man has a hard 
time, too. This part of the country we have 
been travelling through is called the black 
belt. Mobile is quite a city and the place 
where Faragut and Young Dewey passed 
the forts with the old ship Hartford. From 
Montgomery to Mobile there are splendid 
hard pine trees, and they tap them, for the 
terpentine and rosin that they manufacture, 
in the same way that maple trees are tapped 
in New England. 
We have seen tropical palms for the last 
two hours, also trailing vines running up to 
the tree tops. 
11 
We arrived in New Orleans at 11.15 p.m. 
January 26th, and all the hotels in the city 
were filled owing to the cotton planters’ con- 
vention, so we had to get rooms in a private 
house. The next day we went the St. 
Charles hotel. Thus far we have traveled a 
distance of 1,595 miles. 
(Continued next week.] 
THE ARBUTUS, 
After the April showers, 
The softer breezes play, — 
And wakes a lovely blossom, 
The floweret of the May. 
Loved by the sturdy pulgrims, 
It woke in days of old, 
And to their hearts so lonely, 
Seemed fairer far than gold. 
Still on its soft sweet petals, 
A blushing hue is born, 
That shows in fail-less beauty, 
The color of the morn. 
Kept on Alert by Brush Fires. 
Brush fires were quite the thing 
in Manchester last Saturday and the 
first of the week, no less than half a 
dozen being reported, some of which 
were such as to be the cause of 
alarm. The high wind last Satur- 
day was a dangerous adjunct to any 
fire, should one have gotten beyond 
control. 
About 3.30 o’clock last Saturday 
afternoon a telephone call sum- 
moned the Manchester apparatus 
to the Davis stable at Magnolia, but 
before the alarm was rung in, as- 
surance was given that the Magnolia 
department had a brush fire which 
threatened the Davis property un- 
der control and the Manchester de- 
partment did not go out. 
Saturday noon a brush fire, urged 
on by the high wind, set fire to some 
straw around the greenhouse of 
Mrs. W. Scott Fitz off School street, 
but some of Roberts & Hoare’s car- 
penters put the blaze out without 
the apparatus being called. 
A brush fire burnt over an acre of 
land at the W. B. Walker estate in 
West Manchester, Saturday, also, 
but workmen with great difficulty 
got it under control without an 
alarm. 
Sunday night sparks from the 
7.08 train, it is thought, caused an- 
other fire on the McMillan property 
at the Row. A telephone message 
notified the department. Firewards 
Frederick Burnham and Nathan P. 
Meldram with several men started 
out, but could find no trace of a fire, 
though they searched for some time. 
Some boys at the brick yard had 
put the fire out. 
Monday afternoon a still alarm 
was given for a brush fire at the Dr 
Fitz estate, West Manchester. 
Driver Page was just leaving the 
engine house with the chemical 
when the fire was reported “all 
out.” 
